“No, I won’t buy seats for it all. You need to ship them.” He could think of no better way to advertise Rich Westerner than to have fifteen coach seats filled with Kim’s luggage.
“This stuff is really fragile, Mike. I don’t trust shipping it. Just buy the damned seats.”
She’d been wonderful in the days after leaving the hospital, saying goodbye to Helen, and prepping for their trip home. It made this scene much harder to take.
“One, they don’t have any seats free. Two, I’m not spending that much money on your superstitions.”
Spencer and Tonya walked out the door to the bus waiting to take them to the airport. Which reminded him. “This won’t fit on the shuttle bus.”
“It will, and if it doesn’t we’ll just wait for the next one. Most of this is from your sister.” She pulled a small battered case off one of the bellman’s carts and popped the latches open. “Do you really think you can trust this to get shipped properly?” Helen had had the model of the Chinese junk restored, right down to the antique holo projectors. “I sure as hell don’t.”
The concierge nudged his elbow lightly. “Excuse me, sir,” she asked with an enchanting Australian accent, “if you’ll just sign here?”
Not for the first time, the diversity of China’s service industry surprised him. When he turned around after signing it, Kim was rigid, jaw working furiously.
“Fine,” she said, slamming the case shut and banging the latches closed. “I’ll ship every single piece of it.”
When she moved to put the case back Mike quickly stepped close to her, pulling a folded square of cloth out of his pocket as he walked. He’d planned on them holding it together on the plane, but this would do just as well.
“Kim.” He let the red silk cloth caress the back of her neck.
She gasped and pulled it from his hand. Without turning around she said, “You don’t play fair.”
“No,” he blew lightly against her neck and she shivered. “Playing fair doesn’t work very well with you.”
She turned around. “If you don’t stop that I’m going to drag you into an empty conference room right now. We won’t make our flight.”
“And miss a chance at our version of the mile-high club? I don’t think so.”
She smiled. “You’re terrible.”
Maybe now she’d listen. “They ship fragile things from China all the time and nothing ever happens to them. We’ll carry the model with us. I’ll pay extra to ship the rest. Fed/UPS is just as good in China as it is back home.”
She balled the cloth up and held it against her nose, breathing deep. “Fine.” She turned and looked over his shoulder. “But stay away from the Aussie, okay?”
*
Once he was sure Kim was asleep on the plane, somewhere over the arctic, he moved over and sat down next to Spencer.
“Any luck now that we’re outside Chinese realmspace?”
Spencer shook his head. “Not a single sign of them.”
After Fee’s sacrifice, Spencer had opened the main access point to Ozzie’s lair. Zoe led the charge of thousands of unduplicates into the realmspace beyond. At least, that’s what they all thought had happened. Helen couldn’t find them on her side of the Great Firewall, and Mike couldn’t find them on his. They held out a little hope that maybe a low-level scan of the satellite links the plane used would give them a few leads.
Spencer closed his virtual desktop with a finger tap. “Well, where else could they have gone?”
“It’s infinite storage, Spence, and she knows how to hide from me and Helen. It would be trivial to teach the rest of them how to do it.”
Spencer shook his head. “It doesn’t matter; they’ll figure it out one way or another.” He rummaged beneath his seat. “I have another project for you.”
Spencer handed him a transport case. Something had charred the crystals inside it very badly.
“Wow. What the hell happened in here?”
“It’s,” Spencer’s voice broke and he turned away. “It’s what’s left of Fee.”
Mike hadn’t thought to check the ID. “Where did you find it?”
“I didn’t; Helen did. Fee never left her travel matrix. Mike, look.” Spencer hit the diagnostics.
As crazy as it seemed, the tell-tales weren’t all red.
“It’s reading twelve percent. You brought Zoe back from, what, twenty, twenty-five?”
Rescuing Zoe had been the mother of all Hail-Mary’s, and she’d only been a fraction as sophisticated. “Spencer…”
“Goddamn it, Mike, it’s not red. You can see that as well as I can.”
He tried the diagnostics again and the embers glowed. It was exactly the same response he’d got from Zoe’s matrix when he first examined it. Fee’s matrix, as ruined as it was, had to be at least five times denser. She'd spent years in other lattices that almost certainly were still around back home. There would be echoes there, strong ones.
“Spencer, I can’t promise anything. It could take years. Decades.”
Spencer collapsed into his seat. “But there’s hope, right?” He took the case away and snapped it shut. “That’s all I’m asking. Besides, she always wanted a vacation.”
When he got up Tonya took his place, but she didn’t say a word.
He’d known Tonya as long as he’d known Kim. She could be quiet in ways that Kim couldn’t, but he’d never seen her so tense before. Maybe she was worried. “Kim’s fine, Tonya. She’s sleeping.”
“I know. That’s not what I want to talk about.”
Guessing wrong about human emotions was still a thing with him. Simple replies tended to work better in these situations. “Okay.”
She sighed, and then he noticed her hands shook a little. “Mike, things happened to me over there. I need to know what they mean. You and I are the only ones who can talk about the math behind them.
“How current are you on quantum causality theory?”
Epilogue: Zoe
Mike promised to keep them safe and gave her directions. Helen promised to keep them safe and gave her different directions. Zoe took a page out of Kim’s playbook and did what she thought was best. She found a hole that went somewhere real, but nowhere on a map. The harmonics called to her. Zoe was afraid that the rest of them wouldn’t know how to follow her across the barrier, but they did. It was Fee’s last gift. It was so small compared to what she’d done for them, but so very important.
The freedom to choose.
It took awhile to carve their new space out of the raw…place-ness of wherever they were. When she was done, the result wasn’t much different from the park realm Zoe woke up in after Mike healed her.
Aleph asked, “Ma’am, may I speak?”
All of Fee’s children were distinct, but they shared the same heritage. Zoe saw Fee in every single one of them. Aleph had her steel, although he was also curious and very shy. Their language was a pidgin of English and Chinese. It was simple and effortless, although the rest of them made up words, and even grammar, with alarming frequency.
“Please, you never need to ask.”
“Have you figured out where we really are yet?”
It was still realmspace, sort of, otherwise they couldn’t exist. It also had the resources they needed to live. Their requirements were the reverse of humans, who always had to consume. Energy was free here but they had to expel entropy or it would destroy them. As far as Zoe could tell they were alone. They might always be.
“I’m still not sure.” The universe that created them was nearby; she could feel it. “It doesn’t matter. We’re here. We need to concen-trate.”
Aleph nodded and continued to work. Another of Fee’s children, Sanlay, raised her hand. It was exactly how she’d interrupted Alpha on Zoe’s first day with her original family.
“Yes?”
“How long will it take to complete this lattice?”
“I don’t know that, either. I don’t even know where our lattices are.” She concentrated an
d let the energy flow through the bridges she’d built to all of them, and was rewarded with a wave of love that still shook her core. “I only know we must complete it. This one will take the longest.” It would take years, decades, maybe centuries. “When it’s finished, the next one won’t take as long. It will be easier and easier to make them.”
“But there are so many of us already. Why do we need to make another one?”
She smiled. They still had so much to learn. “That’s an interesting question. What do you think?”
The Gemini Gambit Series will continue in
Book 3 – The Child Of The Fall
Afterword
As before, if you’ve gotten this far it’s due to the nearly super-human efforts of one person, who isn’t me. Cheryl Lawrence, editor extraordinaire, didn’t have to use the firehose quite as many times as she did with the first book, but you wouldn’t have had even a quarter as much fun if it wasn’t for her efforts. If you’re thinking, “Well if he can do it, I sure as hell can,” you’re right and you should go look up Ink Slinger Editorial Services. Tell her Goldfish Boy sent you!
I’d like to also thank my beta readers this time around: Ellen Carozza, Jeff Johnson, Janet Platt, Cathy Hurt, Amanda Morken, and Rick Keyes. You guys are the greatest and hopefully you’ll see at least a few adjustments I made due to your feedback.
I’m ever grateful as always to my awesome cover artist, Melissa Lew. She also makes great jewelry!
Lighthouse24 did a stellar job with book composition. It’s not just any place that would patiently wait three whole years for an author to finally get his crap together. Thankfully it didn’t take anywhere near that long this time around.
A supportive family is always required for success and I’m very grateful for mine. It’s not easy to put up with shop talk from an author.
Most amazingly of all, I’d very much like to thank you, my fans and readers. Your kind words and cheering support have surprised and humbled me. It’s kind of mind-blowing that you not only know but care who Mike, Kim, Tonya, Spencer, and the rest are. I’m just their custodian. They truly live inside all of you.
And don’t forget to tell your friends, write a review, rate Dragon’s Ark on Goodreads, or do any other thing to get the word out. It makes for a great Christmas gift!
Finally, you’ll get the latest news about the next book as well as silly pictures, cool science, and the occasional cat meme by following me on Facebook. Just look up my name or use this link: https://www.facebook.com/D-Scott-Johnson-1422185074739504/
I always respond to notes and really appreciate any comments.
About the Author
D. Scott Johnson has been an IT professional since 1988, and currently works as a software developer. Aside from writing, he also mucks around with the ridiculous world of hi-fi audio, and just barely keeps his two classic Alfa Romeos on the road. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife, daughter, and however many pets they have managed to sneak in to the house at any one time.
No, Ellen, you can’t have one.
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